El avión que no debería existir El Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk

Video from the channel Distrito Zeta and 2 more about Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 16:37. Language: Spanish. Video type: Documentary.

Educational documentary about the Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk. It follows its theoretical origin, the Have Blue program, its operational quirks, its combat use and its retirement.

The video starts from a 1964 paper by Soviet mathematician Pyotr Ufimtsev on electromagnetic diffraction. Denys Overholser, a Lockheed engineer, read it in 1975 and saw that it made it possible to calculate an object's radar signature from its shape. That idea gave rise to Have Blue, whose first flight took place on 1 December 1977 at Area 51 with test pilot Bill Park. Both prototypes were lost in accidents, but the program went ahead, and the production F-117 entered service in 1983.

The aircraft carried no radar so as not to give itself away with its own emissions: it navigated by inertial system with preset coordinates, dropped laser-guided bombs and operated only at night. It made its combat debut in Panama in December 1989, during Operation Just Cause, against the barracks at Río Hato, where the bombs deliberately fell away from the buildings. In January 1991, during Desert Storm, it struck strategic targets over Baghdad. On 27 March 1999 an SA-3 missile shot down an F-117 over Serbia. The battery was commanded by Zoltán Dani, and the pilot, Dale Zelko, was rescued. With the F-22 in production, the last F-117s landed at Holloman on 22 April 2008. Part of the fleet remained stored at Tonopah, and the video mentions later flights over the Nevada desert.